BBCSH 'The Comfort of Fury'
by tigersilver
Summary: From Molly's POV, Sherlock's observations on the whole matter of Mary's loss, six months on. Angst, yes. Anger, definitely. Care? Of course!


**Part 2 Comfort Series: 'The Comfort of Fury'**

**Author: tigersilver**

**Pairing: S/J; J/M (deceased now); all canon relationships observed. **

**Word Count: 3,399**

**Warnings/Summary: From Molly's POV, Sherlock's observations on the whole matter of Mary's loss, six months on. Angst, yes. Anger, definitely. Care? Of course!**

* * *

"That _wench_."

"W-What? The—_who_?" Molly is startled by the sudden growl, glancing about her peaceful lab like a deer caught in the headlamps. But there's no one else present but one moody detective, clearly fuming. She peers over at him from behind her safe retreat behind the Leica scope, juggling slides to pull forth the next one. "Um. W-Who is it exactly are you're speaking of, Sherlock?"

"That cunt." Sherlock mutters darkly over the eyepieces of the Zeiss and shows no signs of having heard a word. Much less a question Molly would really adore a response to. "The wretched, the abysmal, the ungrateful, the inordinately stupid _stupid_ woman."

"Sherlock? Not me, I hope?" Tentatively Molly stands up and tiptoes closer to her visitor, nervously inserting her gloved hands in her lab coat pockets. There's only one of them here with her this morning; John Watson very rarely accompanies the world's only consulting detective these days. Molly gulps at the passing memory of why that _is_, exactly, and forces her attention back to a frowning and visibly furious Sherlock. The man slaps another slide into the scope with careless precision and vigour and ignores her entirely. "Umm…?"

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he hisses, repeating himself, and Molly swears to herself she can almost see the air burnt blue about the detective's head, there's so much venom. Whoever this woman is ,who's gone and ticked off Sherlock Holmes, Molly is fairly sure she doesn't know of her. However…it never doesn't pay to be certain.

"Ah…hey? Sherlo—"

"One thing she had to accomplish, just the one simple thing," Sherlock mutters on, oblivious and viciously twisting the knobs on the instrument. "Bastarding cunt." The one slide is popped out, another is inserted like clockwork. "One. Bloody. Thing. And the—fucking—miserable—brainless **bint** of a female can't manage! Aha! There it is. Talc. Manganese—cosmetics! Good! Now we know what to look for. That blonde munter, that stupidly short-lived _tart_!"

"Sherlock!" Molly exclaims, shocked into a loudish gasp. "You mustn't speak ill of the dead! Not of poor Mary!"

It's about poor Mary, of course, Sherlock's strop. Molly closes her eyes briefly upon the sight of Sherlock whipping about on the swivel chair, flicking off the power switch on the scope as he does. It's unlike him, leaving the last sample still inside it; Molly frowns as severely as she can manage. Sloppy is as sloppy does, and it's still her lab, all right? "Really, Sherlock?" The words spill out, almost against her will. "You can't do that, you can't just go about saying _that_. Poor _Mary_."

"Excuse me?" Sherlock demands flatly. "Oh, enough!" He tilts his head, just so, and glares across the short distance remaining between them. "I am hardly speaking ill of the dead, Molly. I am merely expressing my extreme dissatisfaction with that wretched woman's behavior."

"What? You—_your_ 'extreme dissatisfaction'?" Molly is a bit aghast. Sherlock Holmes is often shocking in his manner but Molly can hardly believe her ears. The stare that he subjects her to is both imperious and impatient; clearly that man has no clue as to exactly how appalling this truly is. "Wait—with John's _Mary_? Oh, Sherlock! She's dead! You can't—you just can't!"

"Of course with Mary," Sherlock nods, rising abruptly and snatching up his coat. "And of course she's dead. Dead as dormouse, dead as that—that bloke, the one I shot, right? Oh yes, very dead, is poor Mary—the trollop! The failure! She failed; didn't I just say that? You heard me."

The coat whips about his broad shoulders like a great cape as he dons it, him simultaneously in motion towards the exit. He pauses, though, and hands Molly—and her dropped jaw—another searing glare.

"Moreover, she failed John _and_ she failed me _and_ naturally I am understandably irate over it. I have absolutely no clue why you are so surprised to learn of this. I should think you'd be pleased with me." He flings out both arms, theatrical as always; Molly blinks rapidly. "I'm sharing, aren't I? Weren't you not all about acting like a human sometimes? Well! Here I am, _acting_."

"Irate?" Molly echoes faintly, ignoring the puzzling assertion that she 'should be pleased', of all things! And this—this is 'sharing', as done up by Sherlock? Ludicrous! Far more to the point to focus on the detective's anger. It seems…it seems a bit irrational. It's been six months, hasn't it? Surely the worst of it should have passed long ago? "You—**_you_**are 'irate', Sherlock? How do you think John must be feeling?"

"Bereft, obviously," Sherlock replies calmly, already more than halfway to the door. "He's barely alive." He halts, turning slightly to face her but his attention is obviously on the mobile he's thumbing away at. "As if a limb is missing. As if his very heart's been torn out. Surely you've noticed it, the few times you've met? It's as plain as the nose on your fa—"

"No, no! It can't be!" Molly stumbles back a step or two, struck by the sudden notion that assails her. "Sherlock? Sherlock, _you _miss her too, don't you? You miss Mary _fiercely_. That's why you're so furious, isn't it? You're grieving!"

As this what it has to be, what it must be, and Molly sees it all, at last, the grand view. Who has been the one caring for John Watson all this time? Sherlock! And who has been the one most intimate with agony the good doctor must have gone through? Sherlock, again. But who is it, also, who'd virtually taken Mary Morstan under his wing and even gone so far as to admit he was fond of her?

No one but Sherlock Holmes, that great ponce, that nutter in Savile Row clothing. That—that emotional ninny!

Molly giggles aloud, completely inappropriately, and instantly slaps a shamed hand across her mouth. "Oh! Oh, _sorry_!"

"Grief? Oh, now, I wouldn't go as far as that, Molly Hooper." Sherlock flips up the collar of his coat and buttons it up methodically. "Grieving," he scoffs, as if the entire concept is something completely foreign to him. Perhaps it is, perhaps he's no idea how to go about it? "Me? Hardly! I wouldn't waste my time over such a pointless—purposeless—_pathetic_—"

"Yes!" Molly interrupts passionately, brief shame over laughing forgotten, as she's dead certain at last of what's on with her favourite detective. "Yes you _are_, Sherlock! Don't deny it! You miss Mary. She's dead and you miss her!"

"Hmm. Perhaps." The detective accords her the smallest of nods, no more than a tiny dip of his chin into the dark fabric of his scarf. "It's possible." He looks thoughtful, musing, his eyes flickering as he takes in the appeal written all across Molly's flushed face. "Right. Perhaps so," he murmurs. "But never so much as John is. Grieving. He grieves terribly. It's…it's wearing."

Sherlock sighs. He seldom does, he usually huffs or sniffs or snorts, but very rarely—increasingly moreso, recently—he sighs. As if…as if exhausted. Burdened beyond anyone's ken.

"And that's why you're so terribly, horribly furious, isn't it?" Molly rushes to say; it's her grand conclusion, what with all the evidence. "With poor Mary? Why you said those foul things of her, Sherlock. But she was never a—never a—a _cunt_. Nor a tart. Nor any of it. You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"Oh, please." Tears rush unbidden to Molly's eyes, momentarily blinding her, almost sufficient to miss the vaguely pained grimace fleeting across Sherlock's countenance. "You do tend to veer off and suffer the fidgets, don't you? How mundane." He sniffs, turning away abruptly. "If you could cease with the armchair psychology, Molly," he says, but Molly is on a roll and barely heeds him. As it's not merely foul language nor speaking ill of the dead, it's more than that. "I'd be most appreciative. No time for that now. I'm late, must be off."

"No, no—wait!"

She knows pain, Molly does, when she sees it. And it's written in every tense line of Sherlock Holmes' angular form.

"Oh, Sherlock! I'm so—I'm so sorry!" she gushes, taking an involuntarily step forward. "You, as well as John—oh, that's so, so sad!"

She is overcome by an urge to fling herself at the man standing so starkly in her lab, the same one not at all averse to stating calmly and sanely that dear departed Mary Watson was the worst of woman, the poorest example of the gender, perhaps even the entire species, and well deserving of all manner of angry outbursts, and all for the sake of Sherlock's own best mate. Not to mention His Nibs himself, summarily deprived of what could have been a very nicely put-together ersatz family!

"Oh….oh, Sherlock, you poor, poor man; you must be grieving for John's sake, as well as your own! That's it, that's it—oh, er…isn't it?"

"Shut up, Molly. Stop doing that," the 'poor, poor man' in question snaps back irritably, and the hand she had unknowingly raised toward him, outstretched, falls limply back again. "I am neither poor, nor grieving, nor in any way deserving of your pity. What I am, though, is late. You'll have to finish up for me, as someone from New Scotland Yard will be by to collect the result in, oh," he glances down at his mobile, "about an hour, I'd say. Concentrate on the sample in the final slide; there's a trace of manganese violet and talc. Face power. Likely was wiped off the victim's left cheek, I daresay, when the strangler was startled."

"Huh? Oh, certainly—yes, but late? Late for what, Sherlock?" Molly asks, collecting herself to go tidy up. "And of course I will. Finish up for you, I mean. An hour? Only?"

"For John." For once in his life Sherlock Holmes doesn't seem to mind explaining his actions. He actually stops long enough to do so. "It's near noon and he's not eaten. If I don't go and stand over him he shan't. Plus we're entirely out of milk and you know how tedious the shops are at luncheon. I despise them."

"Oh!" Molly smiles across the room. "Oh, for John, of course. By all means," she flaps a hand at Sherlock, who has the door open and is halfway through it, having not waited at all for her expected acquiescence. "And so you should, everyone does."

"Hmph."

She winces a bit at the usual _being taken for granted_ aspect of their relationship but then she's also a bit chuffed, for John's sake. "Go, if it's for John. But…Sherlock?"

"What?"

"Well. I mean to say—"

"Then say it."

"It's been nearly six months now since Mary—since Mary, well." She shrugs uneasily. "Ah? You know."

"Get on!" Sherlock waggles his brows at her. "I've _said _I'm late."

"Is he not improved, not even a little? John…er. John?"

"Improved?" Sherlock blinks back at her over his shoulder, long and slow, fingers tightening slowly upon the doorframe. "Hmm, you say 'improved'. Well, what do you think? You tell me! What have you observed, Molly Hooper?"

One dark brow arches up at Molly, as if he simply cannot understand why anyone in their proper mind would be asking of him such a very useless question.

"But—six months is—er? Isn't it?" Molly feels a bit helpless before such castigation. "I mean, it's normal to—"

"Shut up! There's nothing normal about John, Molly! Recall, please, the circumstances? Mary Morstan Watson gave every sign of being in ruddy good health all through that nine, no! Nearly ten months, and yet she had the temerity to expire due to a completely undiagnosed weakness in the vascular structure of her brain. She experienced a massive aneurysm, directly at onset of the birthing process, and the resultant trauma was sufficient to claim the life of her unborn child. All of this, _Molly_." Sherlock slams the flat of his hand upon the doorframe, loud as a revolver report; Molly jumps. "All this occurred in the maternity ward of one the finest hospitals in the City, the top-ranked, and it happened despite the efforts of the best specialists money could buy! Right under John's nose it happened—_and he's a doctor_, Molly. A medical man, accustomed to successfully saving lives in the very worst of conditions! He lost everything he values that day only these six months past and yet you dare ask of me 'is he improved'?"

"But, Sherlock, no one could've ever known—"

"I could have. I could have and I didn't, _did I_?"

"Sherlock!"

"Granted that's decidedly _not_ my area but still…"

With a sharp huff the detective releases the door; Molly fancies she glimpses the imprint of his grip on the metal panel.

"Still. I should have—I might've—but **she**! _She_ was the one who failed us—failed us both! By up and dying, Molly, and doubly so—she took the child with her. Do you wonder why I'm perturbed by that? Can you even hazard a guess as to the profundity of John's loss? Because I do doubt it. Even _I_—even I can't. Quite."

He subsides into a stiff silence, at last releasing Molly from the furious glow of his strange sodium-hued gaze.

"Sherlock, oh god, Sherlock!" Molly gasps; nothing on earth could prevent her rush forward, not this time.

She flings forward, dashing about the equipment in a flailing sort of sprint. The detective stands cold and still beneath her clutching hands, reacting not at all to her hasty embrace.

"Don't. Please don't."

He's not so much resistant as frozen solid. Molly can practically feel the distaste dripping from that most usual word. 'Please' is not a word Sherlock Holmes employs often, though Molly's noticed he has been much more subdued as of late. "I am delayed enough already, do unhand me. This is all ancient history, nothing to cry hysterics over."

"Oh, _you _shut it, Sherlock! Just…just shut it! It's perfectly normal to still be upset! And of course it's too soon. What was I even thinking, right?"

Molly pats at the back of Sherlock's coat frantically, seeking some sort of reaction, not caring if it's only the return of the dark mutterings of earlier.

But, no.

"Leave go," that well-known voice rumbles above her head. She shakes it miserably, not noticing she's smeared the infamous scarf with tears and a dribble of mucus. "_Please_."

It is somehow purely horrible to hear, Sherlock begging. Especially when he's asking to be released from the comfort of a friend's embrace, after having been through such an awful time of it.

"I—I can't say—I don't even—but it's not your fault!" Molly stumbles about for words, any words, but especially the magical ones this one singular 'never a sociopath' genius might understand and even deign to accept. "No, it was never _your_ fault, Sherlock!"

"Don't be so ridiculous," Sherlock replies sharply. "Of course it wasn't. I never said it was, did I? It was an aneurysm, not a murder."

"Sherlock, please!" But there aren't any proper words, really; Molly has to content herself with what people always say at times like these. It's probably very poor comfort indeed, but she feels compelled. "You mustn't be so angry with her! These things_ happen_."

"No, Molly, they do not, actually." Sherlock's hands are very gentle as they go about detaching her and setting her to rights. He whips out a handkerchief and dabs the trickle of saline off her cheeks studiously, never once breaking their mutual gaze. "This is not Victorian England. There are ways and means of recognizing likely victims of such disorders before they ever become victims. Medical practice has advanced to the point of prevention and it never should have happened at all. Not to Mary. Not to John. But it has, and, as it _happens_, it falls to me to ensure John eats and John sleeps and John bathes at least every other day."

"Sherlock."

"No. Hush. It falls to_ me_, tedious as it all is but someone _must_, and when I am at home I can hardly say aloud what I really think of her. Mary. How very much I despise her for what she's done to him—and all right, if you insist, what that despicable cunt has inflicted upon _me_ as well, solely by extension. Can I? As I mentioned earlier, you should ought to be proud of me, Molly. I am actually demonstrating some consideration here. For John."

"No, no, of course not, but—I mean, of course I _am_, Sherlock, but!"

"**Shh**! And I need hardly ask that you not repeat it, not go tattling tales out of turn? That should Doctor John Watson ever accompany me here again one fine day, to this very mortuary, this very place, that you'll keep your flapping trap shut tight and never breathe a word to him as to _my_ feelings for that disappointingly horrid hag? Feelings! Hah!"

"No, nev—" Molly burbles, gripped tight all at once by two gloved hands. Sherlock looks deadly, and even worse, deathly. And it's all she can do not to burst out into sobs or maybe slap him.

"Who needs them?" Sherlock asks, rhetorically. He shrugs, a tip-tilting faux grin sliding one his face and then instant off again. "But of course _you_ won't; it's as I thought," Sherlock nods down at Molly approvingly, sparing her a taut smile. It's a little less plastic this time, a little more real. Molly relaxes, infinitesimally. "You, at least? _You _are always above rubies when it comes to professional discretion, vapid or no, are you not? So? It's done, we've discussed it, case closed—over! And I must be off out, posthaste. Forty five minutes left to you; get on with it. Cheers!"

"Huh?" Molly stares up and up, scrambling and failing to connect the 'forty-five minutes' to some topic the detective has mentioned in the last hour or so. As she's pretty sure it was mentioned but in all the hoopla she can't quite recall? "What are you saying, 'forty-five minutes'? Hold up, Sherlock!"

"Good god, are you that thick?" Sherlock scowls briefly, stepping back through the door. And not stopping. "Till they send someone from the Yard, Molly." He begins to close it firmly in her face, finally relenting at the last moment to pop his shaggy head around. "_Face powder_. Last slide. Elf brand, I do suspect. _Do_ keep up, Molly; a man's life depends upon it. Chip, chip!"

There's a silence, abrupt and harsh; Sherlock Holmes is departed the room. Even the air seems shocked.

Molly is also; it's been too, too much, and in such a short time. She can't cope.

Thankfully, Molly is left to her own devices at last. She also sighs. Heavily. It seems to the thing to do, _these days_.

"Yes. Right. Chip, chip, you arse," she addresses the absent detective. "_Cheerio_, you great wanker, " she grumbles, making her way over to the abandoned scope and turning it on again. It'll be a bit of a tight squeeze, forty-five minutes, but she's competent and trusted and…well. Clearly her friend, that huge berk, needs her to be. "Oh!" she exclaims, seeing exactly what Sherlock described, and yes, it _is_ what NSY will need, and _yes_, she'd better get speedy on it, what with only a little time left on the clock. But, still?

But still. Molly's known heartbreak and Molly's known fear and she'd not liked the bleak look in Sherlock's eyes when he spoke of John. His John. She'd not liked the downwards tilt of his lips or the anger at a poor dead woman or the incredible presence of shadow she could nearly see hovering over him.

This was dark place, a dark time. What must they be even going through, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson? It cannot be good.

What must_ he_ be? Every day, alone again. For it wasn't as though John Watson was present.

"Oh, _oh_! But…but, _poor_ Sherlock!"

It makes for a change, grieving over the ones still present and breathing. Molly can't say as she likes it.

**Fin**


End file.
